Wild Horses (8 page)

“Why the Caymans?” Derek wanted to know.

“Hey, if it’s good enough for drug lords.”

Derek shook his head. “This is sounding like a hell of a lot of trouble. Why didn’t you two just keep the cash liquid while you had it? What’s wrong with a locker at the airport, or a shoebox?”

“That was our safety net in case we got caught. Look, the way a casino works isn’t theftproof, but they do give it their best shot. What we were doing was extremely high-risk, and if we were going to get caught, they wouldn’t have nabbed us first thing — the Gaming Control Board would’ve had us under surveillance awhile. So if I’m making trips to a locker, they know where the money is. If it’s in my apartment, their goon squad tears the place apart. If I keep it in a U.S. bank, the account can be frozen just like that.” Boyd snapped his fingers. “And I can’t get to it. This way, it may be inconvenient, but at least it’s accessible in the end.”

“Assuming you aren’t rotting in jail.”

“Well, I took precautions there, too. Some nights I’d skim a few hundred directly off the drunkest players. You can tell when they’re having too good a time to count their chips. You have to be careful of the eye-in-the-sky cameras in the ceiling, but I’m good enough with my hands. Palm one, or skip it back into the chip rack and block the view with my arm. So if I was ever caught, what I was hoping might happen would be, okay, I lose my job and they take away my sheriff’s card to deal and maybe I get blacklisted by the entire industry, but they’re reluctant to prosecute because I’ve been doing the public, too. Skimming off the casino, that’s one thing, but the players…? I go to court over it, then it’s public information, and they’ve got a public relations nightmare on their hands. I mean, we’re talking about people who went ballistic when the stuffed elephant lost a tusk and made some kids cry. How many changes of underwear you think they’ll go through if it gets out one of their dealers has been skimming the gamblers? Fruit of the Loom doesn’t even make enough.”

Derek congratulated him on how well he had thought it through and immediately asked how he planned on keeping Madeline from accessing the money. Boyd told him how he’d closed out the local dummy account before leaving Vegas — Madeline’s signature being one of the easier to forge he had come across, unlike Allison’s, with all her loopy letters — and he’d destroyed her bank statements the previous afternoon following the fit Allison had thrown.

“I grabbed them while Madeline was picking cactus spines out of her foot. She had a load of laundry going and I stuck them down in the wash.” Boyd shrugged. “It was an impulse thing.”

“And you’re counting on her not raising a fuss at the bank?”

“It might look awfully suspicious on her part, wouldn’t you think? Drawing attention to herself like that?”

“Could be, but I’m thinking you shouldn’t underestimate this woman.” Derek tapped his anvil of a chin. “Clear something up for me. Madeline scouts you away from Cactus Dirk’s and gets you on at the Ivory Coast. Okay, now: How long before she hits you with this idea to skim your table?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“And she’s got these two water sport enthusiasts on video already, before you ever got there. Right?”

“Right.”

“How long before you first shtupped her?”

“A week,” Boyd grumbled, disliking this what-have-you-done-now tone of voice from his bone-headed Goliath of a brother.

“And you don’t see what she’s up to the whole time? Guarantee you she was trolling the grind joints for just the right guy. You stupid weenie, she must’ve turned cartwheels the day she met you. When your pants drop, you turn into a pull-toy. Well, it’s a good thing you’re sticking it to her right now, because she’d’ve been sticking it to you one day, and probably with that big blond dude she never let you meet.”

Boyd huffed with indignation. “I made the earth move for that woman. She wouldn’t dare.”

“No? Nothing I’ve heard about this woman reminds me of sainthood yet. You’re better off rid of her.”

Derek had a point again. Not knowing the vindictive lengths to which Madeline might — or even could — go to sour his life and recovery of the money, Boyd had thought the safest route to take would be to disappear altogether, not even go near that seven hundred thousand by conventional means.

All he needed was for this Wang Chung character to hack his way down to the Cayman Islands bank and bring that money back up in such a way that it was accessible to Peter Wackermann. But it would have to be sprinkled into different accounts, lots of them, in relatively small sums, as federal law required all transactions in excess of ten thousand dollars to be reported to the IRS. He most definitely wanted to avoid notice by them.

“Would you trust this Wang Chung if it was your money?” Boyd asked. “Say once he has everything set up for me, as soon as we step out the door, what’s to keep him from going right back and transferring my money into his own accounts? It’s not like I’d have any legal recourse, is it?”

“Relax. He’s not so much a thief as he’s an anarchist. So by doing this job for you, he gets to stick it to the system. Don’t ask me what system, he’s never that specific. Just as long as some corporation suffers a loss, he’s happy, and he won’t have any interest in sticking it to you.”

“Yeah? If that’s how he gets his chuckles, why doesn’t he do this for me for free?”

“Scratch an anarchist, find an entrepreneur,” Derek said. “I never met one yet who’d rather burn money instead of a flag.”

*

By late evening, at Derek’s Altadena condo, Boyd was tucked away for the night in the spare bedroom with most of a celebratory bottle of champagne fizzing in his belly. He looked over his new driver’s license, trying to ramrod a mental connection between his handsome, mustachioed face and the name Peter Wackermann.
Height: 5’7”.
Damn. Should’ve thought to fudge an extra inch or two.

It occurred to him that his car was still registered to Boyd Dobbins. A small incongruity like that could trip him up badly down the road. Tomorrow he’d have to remember to ask Wang Chung about hacking into the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, to do some rechristening — if his five percent included that perk, as well. Dinky state bureaucracy, how hard could it be?

Boyd decided against trusting this to memory. Better to word-process a note to himself, something they would see as soon as he switched on the laptop tomorrow.

Boyd set the computer on his bed, thumbed the twin releases of the lid lock, tilted up the screen. Couldn’t remember having left a slip of paper in there last night, resting atop the keys.

It looked like Allison’s handwriting, if sloppier, as though she had written the note while drunk. Last night the sweet reek of Southern Comfort was obvious as soon as he’d opened the door after coming home from the casino. Allison had roused herself after he’d decided to catch a few winks on the couch before hitting the road?

Dear asshole,
it read. He couldn’t figure this out at all.
So maybe we never loved each other, but you at least owed me some basic respect, and that redhead harridan wasn’t it.
Then a furious cloud where she’d begun to write something, then scratched it out.
You can have your toy put back in shape whenever you’re ready to apologize. On your KNEES. If I feel like it.
Then another scratch-out — her signature? — followed by some new terrorist’s moniker:
The bitch you shouldn’t have betrayed.

“What are you talking about?” Boyd cried to the note. He switched on the computer, to see what she’d done. “I loved you!”

Truly, he had, loving nearly everything about her and trying daily to remind her what those things were. A veritable goddess, she was, if a little crazy in the head now and again. She had to realize he wouldn’t have invited just any woman to move to Vegas with him. And with Allison there’d even been the possibility of a future. Had she never learned of Madeline, he would have wanted it to be the two of them heading for L.A., together. But no, she’d had to force the situation prematurely, turn it vicious and ugly.

It was a sorely punishing loss. Allison was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, except other women.

The laptop’s liquid crystal display began to coalesce, warming up—

And when he saw what she had done, Boyd began to scream. What a knife she’d thrust between his ribs.

“This is a bitch!” he cried. “This is a bitch!”

With pounding footsteps, Derek burst into the bedroom like a parent who’d heard his child awaken from nightmares. If only. Boyd pointed a trembling finger at the computer, told Derek what she’d done: dumped everything from the hard drive.
Everything.

“So let me get this straight,” said Derek. “You never made backups of any of the data?”

Boyd crumpled Allison’s note and hurled it at him. “You’re so fucking smart, what do
you
think?”

Derek hadn’t laughed this hard all day.

*

A poor night’s sleep, a toxic champagne headache, and one more trip across the godforsaken Vegas-L.A. conduit later, Boyd found himself reduced to pounding on his former landlord’s door, hope’s last refuge. Without question, this had to be the worst day in anyone’s life since the Crucifixion.

Doug Powell answered, frumpy and quizzical in his doorway. No recognition whatsoever behind those little round glasses. He was a complete cipher.

“It’s me, it’s Boyd Dobbins. From 2-C.”

He realized the obvious when Doug pointed it out: the missing mustache. He’d rinsed it down the bathroom drain this morning, all the disguise he’d been able to muster, but effective. Clean-shaven, Boyd looked five or six years younger, his face more innocent and boyish than he’d seen since his mid-twenties, still blessed by smooth contours and that clear-eyed devil’s twinkle.

After Doug let him in, Boyd explained the situation: He and Allison had had a minor little spat. Gone overnight to cool off, and now he comes back and lets himself in upstairs, to fix a nice apology dinner to surprise her when she gets home from day care, but the whole place is devoid of life.

Doug’s eyebrows peaked into innocent arches; he hunched his shoulders. “What can I tell you, I don’t know anything.”

Boyd took a step closer. “Allison wouldn’t move out without letting you know, without turning her keys back in. She
wouldn’t
. She works with kids, she’s responsible. So where’d she go?”

“I told you already, I don’t
know
anything! I didn’t even … didn’t even know she was gone until you, until you told me.”

Boyd sighed. Doug clearly had a freakish career ahead as the worst actor on the planet. Boyd slipped from his pocket a deck of cards and began to shuffle them into his palm.

“Doug, Doug, you tell me this but you’re about as convincing as a drag queen with five-o’clock shadow. Come on, it’s me. It’s Boyd. No mustache, but I’m the same guy. Help me out here.”

Plea after plea did virtually no good, the little butterball admitting finally that maybe Allison had moved out, very-spur-of-the-moment-like, very mysterious, but he didn’t know anything more than that. Believe him? Not really. Crack him in one lie and there were probably others.

“Make you a wager,” Boyd offered. “I do this magic trick. You pick a card, but don’t let me see it, whatever you do, and if I guess what it is, you tell me everything Allison told you about where she’s going. I guess wrong and I’m out of here. Doesn’t this sound like a fair way to resolve our dispute?”

“Oh, right.” Doug planted dimpled fists on his hips, playing the seasoned skeptic. Total putty. “And the check’s in the mail.”

“Doug Powell, you are one tough nut to crack,” said Boyd. He shuffled the cards with a flourish, fanned them elegantly, offered them facedown. Doug tweezed one free and held it cupped in both hands.

“And now,” Boyd said, “we invoke the mystical powers of the third eye.”

He coaxed Doug into holding the card by a lower corner and along his nose, so that its top edge lay against the spot centered just above his eyes. The third eye, Boyd explained, was the locus of inner vision, seeing all, intuiting all.

“Eyes closed?” said Boyd. “It’s starting to come to me…”

Doug huffed. “Can we get this over with?”

“You bet,” and then Boyd drew back and punched the card dead center. Doug’s nose gave with a pop and his glasses backflipped over his head. He tottered sideways, then his legs buckled beneath him and he dumped butt-first onto the floor, where he sat goggle-eyed, clutching at a fistful of blood.

The bent card had fluttered to the carpet, landing face-up.

“King of clubs, I almost said that!” Boyd exclaimed. “Now … can we talk?”

*

Failure always seemed worse after sundown, and once the cold, remote eye of the moon had risen, the only thing that would make him feel better was walking the Strip. Breaking a tacky sheen of sweat in the warmth of night, burning under neon, exiling himself to the carnival midway atmosphere.

A surgeon’s hands, when it came to the cards, and he’d risked one for nothing. Doug Powell had been worthless, maintaining that he knew nothing about where Allison had gone. The only thing he’d added, finally, was that she acted as if she never wanted to see Boyd again — not alive, anyway — and that now he could understand why. It had just gotten too sad, watching Doug blubber and bleed into his hand. Finally Boyd had found a washcloth, filled it with ice cubes and wet it with cold water, and given it to him with a pat on the shoulder.